The phrase “Industrial Internet” has arisen as conventional industrial equipment becomes increasingly network-connected. Examples of such equipment include, but are not limited to, medical equipment, aviation units, trains, gas turbines and any sensors thereof. Network connections were initially used to remotely control and/or collect data from the equipment, but are now used to diagnose problems, provide software updates, and/or integrate the equipment into cloud architectures (e.g., to store data from their sensors and apply analytics thereto).
Best practices typically require isolation between equipment (generally referred to herein as “assets”) and the public Internet. Absent this isolation, the assets are susceptible to cyber-attacks which may result in theft of private data, theft of intellectual property, asset malfunctions, etc. However, due to system error, human error, or sabotage, hardware assets may become connected to the public Internet.